Outside the Grind is our occasional feature that spotlights the unique passion projects, side hustles, and hobbies of finance professionals outside the office. Let us know if you know, or you are, a CFO or finance pro with an interesting, weird, or unusual side gig.
Like many CPAs, Greg Adams wanted to dispel the idea that accounting is boring. But a couple years into writing an accounting resource guide, Adams—who’s been CFO of the American Management Association , a professional development nonprofit, since 2019—realized that his project wasn’t helping his cause. The guide for accountants, which drew on a career filled with international travel and interesting clients, was at risk of becoming “another boring resource guide,” he told CFO Brew. “I need[ed] to make this exciting.”
So this avid reader of the Jack Reacher series and historical novels ditched the nonfiction to write his own thriller, featuring Dex McCord, the kind of accountant hero he’d always wanted to see in TV shows. Green Shades, a “financial crime thriller,” with accounting education tucked in, was published in 2024.
CFO Brew recently spoke with Adams about writing the novel, how he found time to write it, and what being an author and a CFO have in common.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
In the opening scene of your book, an accountant returning from an auditing trip abroad is tied up and pulled behind a speedboat until he drowns, setting up the mystery for the book’s hero, also an accountant, to solve. How did you come to write an international crime thriller centered on CPAs?
I always wanted to write a book. One of my big motivations was whenever I’m asked what you do as a profession, [I] say, “I’m an accountant,” but then you have to follow with “But I really do cool things. I really have a lot of global adventures, and I really meet a lot of people, solve problems, and help folks.”
I really wanted to change the image and brand of the accountant. Because accountants are much cooler than people think. You can do so many different things and go into so many different industries. As an auditor, [during] my days at KPMG, three of those 11 years were in Sydney, Australia. I was flying on a plane to the middle of nowhere and talking to geologists at gold mines. You do a lot of exciting things as an accountant [and] you know everything going on at the whole company, because you see everything.
I wanted to break that image of the bean counter or green-eyeshade accountant, so it was important for me to grab everyone’s attention, to make them go on to then learn about this guy, Dex McCord, who has all those key accounting skills that people wouldn’t think of, you know, the business acumen, the critical thinking, the athleticism. Someone might see it’s a book with an accountant as a protagonist, but you want to get people’s attention. The first chapter, the first scene, I think, got some people’s attention.
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Who did you write the book for? Which audiences did you have in mind?
It was geared toward people who are thinking about joining the accounting profession, or are maybe interested in the accounting profession. There's a void in these action heroes. On TV, you've got the doctors, the cops, the detectives...where's the accountant? If you want to change the pipeline, these high school students, the parents gotta tell these kids, or college students, “See how cool it may be being an accountant.” So I wanted the book to portray that.
Green Shades, as you noted, is more than 300 pages. How did you find the time to write a whole novel while also being a CFO?
It did take me 7+ years to write this book. The pandemic helped accelerate that; working in New York City and having an hour commute on the train, that also helps. Instead of sleeping on a train, getting excited about proofreading and coming up with ideas and doing a lot of research on the train. Sometimes, whether it’s on the train or you wake up in the middle of night, you think of something and you dictate it in your notes. And then when you have time, whether it’s after hours or weekends, or whenever you squeeze it in, you’ll type it on the computer and put it in the story.
You’ve mentioned that there’s a lot of overlap between the skills needed in accounting and writing a novel. What do you mean by that?
Being able to leverage the skills of storytelling, which is critical for accountants. As an accountant, or even as a manager or professional, generating the numbers and getting those correct, that’s the easy part. The technical skills, in my opinion, are pretty much a given for accountants, especially if you’re a CPA, that’s a given coming in. What differentiates you is, how do you present information? How do you tell the story? Know[ing] your audience, effective listening. I always say you have to spar with your audience, and describe the situation, what the problem is, what action you’re going to take, then the expected result.